Terrible
by pjjammjamm
Summary: Edward told Bella once that he'd insulted Rosalie with pretty much the first words he'd ever said to her. What did he say that was so terrible as to merit the animosity between them? A humorous look at it, explained to Bella and Renesmee


**Just a funny oneshot that I initially wrote for another site, but decided to post here. Please keep the comments kind or constructive, or don't say anything at all. As is proven in this fic, words can have a powerful impact. **

**This all takes place well after Breaking Dawn, in a brief "family moment" between the Cullens. **

**Disclaimer- It's not mine. It never will be. If it were mine, I doubt I'd be writing fanfiction about it.**

Bella stared in amusement and the epic battle proceeding before her.

It was one of many in an endless war, and a common occurrence in the Cullen household, but one that amused both herself and her daughter nevertheless.

"How long do you suppose they'll go this time?" Renesmee mock-whispered into her ear, barely standing on tip-toe to reach her mother's height. Bella snickered, watching as both vampires clearly heard the little girl's comment and flinched only slightly before resuming their previous stance.

"Actually, it shouldn't be as long this time" Alice chirped cheerfully from her corner of the room, where she was lounging with a magazine. "Emmett wants to hunt pretty soon, and you know how physical Rose and Emmett get after hunting. I'd give it no more than an hour or two."

"You don't have an exact time, Alice?" Bella asked, surprised, and then widened her eyes in understanding when Alice raised one dainty eyebrow and glanced at Renesmee in a very obvious manner. "Oh, right," Bella said, remembering her sister's inability to see around her daughter. "Renesmee, sweetly, back away from the contest for a moment, Alice is trying to work her magic."

Grinning, Renesmee pulled back from the carnage before her to give Alice a clearer view. Curious, she turned to her mother and asked, "Mom, how come Auntie Rose and Dad don't get along, like, ever?"

Both immortals in question shifted their weight slightly when they heard the question, but neither of them responded any further, and the staring contest continued on in silence.

Bella pursed her lips slightly and frowned, turning the question over in her mind. Now that her daughter had brought it up, it did seem that Rosalie and her husband fought far more often than most members of the family. After giving birth to her daughter, even Bella had been able to get along with and form a sort of friendship with the standoffish blond. Edward, clearly, had never been nearly as successful.

Alice giggled from her position on the couch nearby, clearly entertained by whatever possible future she'd just seen, and said, "Go on, Bella. Ask them. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to tell you."

Both Edward and Rosalie blinked at the same time.

"You went first!" Both shouted, pointing at one another. Renesmee snickered at the adult's theatrics, but Bella merely rolled her eyes and repeated the question her daughter had asked earlier, adding slightly more detail.

"She has a point, you know. You two never get along."

Edward pouted, shooting Rosalie a nasty look. She narrowed her honey-golden eyes at him in retaliation, and before an all-out staring contest could develop once again, (the longest staring contest had gone on two days, 27 minutes, and 52 seconds, by Alice's watch) Bella said, "Edward, you told me you said something to upset Rose all those years ago. It must have been terrible, to have kept you two acting like this for so long.

"Oh, it was, alright." Rosalie stated smugly, clenching her jaw as Edward rolled his eyes. Bella watched them both for a moment, and when neither volunteered anymore information, asked,

"What was it?"

Both vampires blinked and looked at her, then at each other.

"You should probably be the one to explain it—after all, you're the one who wont let it go," Rosalie shook her head the moment the words left Edward's lips.

"I'd rather not remember such a horrid period of my life," She replied daintily, tossing her curtain of hair behind her shoulder and tilting her nose up in distain.

"That's just because you know how vain it's going to make you look," Edward answered smugly, clearly confident that he had won.

"If neither of you are going to tell them, I will," a new voice said, making everyone turn to see Carlisle coming down the stairs with Esme following quietly behind him. "It's about time you two got over it, anyways."

"Got over what?" Renesmee asked innocently, her eyes wide on her grandfather figure. Carlisle smiled and began his story, just as Emmett entered the door to listen. With everyone gathered around them, both Edward and Rosalie shifted their attention to Carlisle as well.

"Well, it started the morning Rosalie first woke up after the change."

"Carlisle, I'm telling you, I don't like it! She's probably going to be miserable, with everything she's been through, without having to live afterwards! Didn't you ever think death might be the kinder thing to do?" Edward asked his father figure and mentor sarcastically, watching as the beautiful blond girl Carlisle had brought home withered in pain.

"Yes, but Edward, she's so young—it seemed such a pointless waste of life."

Esme sighed and folded the wet cloth she held to the girl's head over so that the cooler parts of it were touching her crinkled, pained face. Another scream erupted from Rosalie's mouth, as her hands flew to her hair in a new effort to take the pain away by causing pain somewhere else. Edward knew it would do no good anyway- the venom burned everywhere.

"Regardless, you can't just change every young dying uncared-for person you come across—we'd have to move every week!" Edward argued, scowling. More screams erupted from a voice hoarse from screaming, and the three vampires in the room flinched with the high pitch of the sound.

"I know, I know," Carlisle replied, running his hand tiredly through his hair. He was about as close to physically tired as a vampire could become, having been dealing with Rosalie and her changing body for the last three days. "And I won't." He promised Edward. He paused before saying, "As much as you may not agree with my decision, you won't take it out on her, will you?"

"Of course not!" Edward replied, offended that his maker could even think him capable of such a thing. "I'll play nice."

"Thank you," Carlisle said gratefully, leaving the room to go downstairs with his wife as Edward replaced her in her post of caring for the changing girl. Esme and Carlisle left to go hunt, and Edward spent the next several hours cleaning tears off of the girl's scrunched-up face and trying to ease her pain as best he could before they came back, fully sated.

Just as they returned, the girl began to come to. Remembering what she had been through, Edward realized that a male probably wasn't the best person to confront her with upon her first awakening, especially considering the strength of a newborn vampire. He edged carefully out of the room to be replaced by Esme, who explained to Rosalie all that she was now, and how it had come to pass.

Rosalie stayed silent in her room for the rest of the day. Carlisle too went up to talk to her, and to apologize for the agony she'd been through, but she'd waved him off, disgusted.

"Edward, you try," Carlisle encouraged, a concerned look on his face. "You can hear what she's thinking, what she needs. We can't. Just go try to get her to open up a little."

Sighing, Edward did as he was told, moving up the stairs at human speed and knocking on the shut door. There was a slight movement in the room before it opened, and Rosalie allowed him to enter, walking back into the room to curl up on a ball on the chair that he had earlier been sitting on as he cared for her.

Edward hesitated, suddenly regretting that he had just walked into the room without pausing to think of what to say. He didn't want to make her uncomfortable, but wasn't sure given the situation how to proceed.

'Great' Rosalie thought, growing more annoyed by the moment. 'He's probably going to start going on and on about how great it is to be a vampire, and how I should hunt and the burn will go away, and how he understands what I've been through' she continued, bitterly remembering Esme and Carlisle's attempts to cheer her up. 'Well, I don't want to hear that right now. I just want to feel clean and calm and close to normal again. I don't want to think about anything that just happened at all.'

Hearing this, Edward carefully considered how to avoid the topic of vampirism completely and help her feel more normal and secure. "You look terrible," He told her quietly, the corner of his mouth turning up to try and tease her, and cheer her up from the depression she seemed to be feeling. "The bathroom's right down the hall if you'd like to clean up at all."

Rosalie's mind went blank. "I… you think I look… I… WHAT?" She shrieked, launching herself across the room at him to grab his neck with her bare hands.

"No, I just meant from the changing, and the dirt from that night, and the blood from before and everything!" Edward tried to say, but it was too late. Rosalie was in absolutely no state to listen to him. "If we fight and break anything, Esme will be so upset—she put a lot of work into making your room comfortable for you," Edward told her solemnly, trying to get her to let him go.

Realizing that he was likely telling the truth, and that the beautiful rug and cherrywood floors were likely expensive as well, Rosalie let him go before she could do anymore damage to them and instead leaned back to glare at him. Feeling defensive and embarrassed at being beaten by a girl, even a newborn, Edward narrowed his eyes and stared back, a little creeped out by her newborn red-colored eyes, but unwilling to lose to Rosalie Hale yet again.

"That's how we found them an hour later, still glaring at each other, neither one saying a word," Carlisle finished, smirking as the staring contest he had witnessed that night began to repeat once again between the two vampires before him.

Bella and Renesmee stared at him, incredulous, while Alice and Jasper snickered and Emmett began to chuckle. "Of all the things you could have said to her, you just had to say that, didn't you?" Emmett asked Edward, his guffaws breaking through the silence in the room. "Tough break, Edward."

"If she hadn't taken it the wrong way, it really wouldn't have mattered," Edward replied hotly, clearly directing this comment to the blond with her arms crossed before him.

"Is there really a WRONG way to take the words, 'you look terrible'?" Rosalie retaliated, raising her eyebrows at him.

"You have got to be kidding me," Bella muttered under her breath, staring at the two of them. Next to her, her daughter nodded.

"They're more like children than I ever was, I think," Renesmee stated, just as quietly.

"Yes, there's a wrong way to take it!" Edward exploded, clearly infuriated.

"From someone else, maybe." Rosalie agreed, clearly smug that she was getting a rise out of Edward. "But not from you! You've always treated me that way, so why should I have expected you to mean it any differently?"

"That was before we'd ever even SPOKEN!" Edward argued, ignoring his wife and daughter as they joined the rest of the family in snickering at the scene unfolding before them. "Of course, if I said it now, you could definitely take it that way, because that's definitely how I'd mean it!"

Rosalie, unable to come up with a sarcastic reply, just gritted her teeth and glared at him once again, her eyes narrowing even further. Edward proceeded to narrow his own eyes into tiny slits and glare back.

Bella stopped laughing and blinked. "Well, this feels familiar," She said, rolling her eyes. "Talk about déjà vu."

Alice, still grinning, turned back to her magazine, sighing at the silence of the staring contest descended on the house once more. "Tell me about it," she agreed, causing Bella and Renesmee to snicker once again, along with most of the rest of the family.

Neither Edward nor Rosalie reacted. Both of them just stared. Watching them, Bella got the distinct impression that this particular war was going to be a never-ending one.

After all, regardless of the context, nobody claim that Rosalie Hale looked "terrible" and get away with it.


End file.
